Food for Thought
by pinkolifant
Summary: Sandor and Sansa meet again in the Vale on the occasion of the tourney organized by Littlefinger. Written for the genre challenge on LJ, the genre being "black comedy".
1. Sandor

Written for the genre writing challenge on LJ with the genre "black comedy". Therefore, expect black humour/gallows humour. Making fun out of seriously bad things.

First chapter out of 3. Very slow updates.

Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, rape and gore

Now betaed for basic grammar mistakes by wonderful TopShelfCrazy so THANK YOU

Any feedback is welcome))

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 **Food for Thought**

The tents dirtied the fields in front of the Gates of the Moon. There were almost as many of them as at the Great Tourney of the Dead Hand in King's Landing. Plenty of colourful stripes were painted on the blazons. The toads wishing to be tigers armoured themselves for the useless parade.

Sandor Clegane stared at the empty lists, wishing he had stayed on the Quiet Isle. Digging graves was solid work, almost as pleasing as breaking the bones of gnats in the training yard every morning. The corpses were silent and they stank less in winter. They couldn't chirp and annoy him. None had been red-haired. Most were muddy-haired like the little she-wolf, from being washed out by the filthy rivers. Some were half-eaten by the wolves. A giant pack prowled the riverlands, visitors said. People rarely had the grace to stop walking, talking and annoying him before the Stranger took them. There were less travellers in winter, but there was never a dearth of corpses.

Tourney meant winnings. Coin, armour and horses could be traded for food. There was none left in the Quiet Isle. The Elder Brother stayed to tend to the sick and the dying, and bid all able-bodied monks to go and find food. Truth be told, he also sent out some cripples. Sandor Clegane was directed to the Vale with his bad, half-lame leg. The journey made him both irritable and placated. Irritable because he never wanted to go anywhere and placated because his corpse would be too heavy for the others to bury if he died of hunger. Except maybe if the wolves half-ate him first. But for that they would have to swim to the buggering island and he had yet to see a _swimming_ wolf.

Lame dogs swam better. Even Stranger acquitted himself admirably for a horse, when his master led him over the sinuous, flooded Path of the Faith, winding from the Quiet Isle to the displeasingly noisy rest of the world.

Stranger now frightened several other horses while making his way through the tents. His master patted him with approval, almost with affection.

"Is there an armoury?" Sandor rasped at the pink-faced knight in yellow breeches, who had become too fat for his armour.

"This way," the knight peeped, trying to fasten a fancy, gilded breastplate.

"Wait," Sandor dismounted, tying Stranger to one of the poles holding the fat man's tent up. It was only proper to thank the good ser in kind for providing useful information.

Sandor grabbed the pudgy man and smashed the breastplate into place, squeezing out all air from the chubby lungs in the process. "There you go," he said with satisfaction.

"Th… Thank you, ser," the knight stuttered, fighting to breathe again.

Calling him ser was most uncourteous. Sandor clumsily untied Stranger. The rope remained loosely attached to the pole. As a result, the horse pulled the tent down when his master cantered off. "Still no ser," he muttered to himself, ignoring the screams of outrage behind him.

The armoury was a miserable shed erected at the far end of the lists. Naturally, the lord of the castle did not want the petty toads to fight over the finer pieces of available weaponry inside his walls. Sandor had to bend to get in.

Behind a rickety counter, with a single silver coin placed on it, the man in charge of the place had his cock shoved in a girl's mouth, way further than the whores normally allowed it. The wench whimpered, gagged as a stuffed pig on the royal table.

Sandor whistled loudly, startling the loving couple. "You," he growled with menace. "I need a lance and a helm. Now."

The man just shrugged after the initial shock of being called to work, and did his best to go on with mouth fucking.

"Girl," Sandor growled louder. "You look young enough to have teeth, you know. He is not paying you enough for this."

Before the wench decided on using this bit of wisdom, the armourer pulled out of her. "What's wrong with you?" he asked with utmost annoyance.

The Hound drew his knife and stuck it into the counter. "Nothing yet," he said in his most murderous tone. "But there will be something wrong with your throat if you don't serve me immediately."

The helm he got was uglier than his old dog's head one, but it was big enough, and the lance was decent and sturdy. It might not explode in the first few passes. When Sandor turned to leave, the serving man grabbed the wench by the hair, carefully moving the silver coin out of the girl's reach. "Where were we?" he asked wistfully.

"Wait," Sandor changed his mind. "On a second thought, I'll have that wench as well. And the coin. And you should thank me for the custom."

"Thank you?" the man pulled a knife as well. "You buggering septon! Who do you think you are? "

"A second son," Sandor answered briefly. Fast as lightning, he sliced at his opponents hand, disarming him. Blood ran fresh and pretty from the man's wrist. "Be happy for it. My brother would cut your throat if you dared fart words at him." With that he slipped the silver in the pockets of his brown robes and hauled the girl over his shoulder as a sack of grain. She was a scrawny thing and very young. Young as another pretty girl he had once known.

Outside the armoury, he put the wench down. She gave him a brave look. "I could…" she began, "I could service you, my lord." She curtsied so badly that even Sandor could have done it better. _It's been a very long time._ He was tempted by her bravery. But before he could answer either yes or no, he noticed a familiar expression of disgust creeping into the girl's eyes.

"Find someone else," he snarled and left her to find his horse.

When he was back in saddle, he realised he forgot to give the girl the bloody coin as he intended. She had surely earned that one.

Names were taken for the tourney at the other end of the lists. By the time Sandor reached the place, he was grateful for the ugly helm which replaced his monk's cowl. Petyr Baelish, who knew the Hound well, stood with the man making a draw. The tourney-master was the ugliest red-haired bastard in existence, looking like a squashed piece of horseshit with a vaguely human face. The Hound almost felt handsome in comparison.

"And you would be?" the bastard asked with total lack of interest.

"Brother Driftwood from the Quiet Isle," Sandor said placidly, deciding at the last moment not to call himself Gravedigger. The unwilling pious name of his poor horse would suffice. "The Faith is hungry."

"How would you like to earn more coin than your faithful skin can ever hope to gain in a fair fight?" Littlefinger asked in a seducing voice, eyeing Sandor's exceptional size.

"I'm all ears," Sandor grated, wondering what Baelish had in mind. It was always best to know what men like him wanted, and then do something completely different. Sandor was pleased with his ugly head where it was; on his shoulders.

"There is a proud, highborn boy I know of," Littlefinger put his proposition forward, "let him win in the first round and I will give you more silver than you can count. But make a good show of it. It should not look to easy."

Sandor nodded stupidly, not saying either yes or no. He put his palm forward and waited.

"The payment comes _after,"_ Baelish hissed, but Sandor never retrieved his hand. Some reward should better come before, especially since he never intended to do what was asked.

Two more knights approached from behind, waiting in line to sign up.

Littlefinger pulled Sandor on the side and counted ten silver coins into his hand. "Alright, holy brother, scamper off now," he told him jovially. "The rest will come after."

Sandor was glad to leave. He soon found an open campfire where he could armour himself without letting his balls freeze. His soot black armour had fortunately survived his travel through the riverlands. By the time he was fully armed, the gallery in the middle of the lists began filling with idle, empty-headed highborns, lords and ladies alike. There was a hooded girl in a blue dress. Her expensive cloak was fastened with a silver mocking bird. Littlefinger must have found a pretty bed-warmer for himself. Her step was _soft_ as it should be, but her hair was too dark under the cloak. _She isn't. She can't be._ Sandor straightened himself to full height and stared at the gallery, but the lady was too far from him to fully see her face.

"She is Alayne Stone," the girl, the bloody amateur whore he got out of the armoury, said behind his back. "Lord Baelish's natural daughter."

The Hound angrily turned around. "Mind your business, woman," he said.

"I was, my lord," she parried him.

The girl looked like a comely washerwoman now, carrying a pile of freshly smelling, wet tunics from some nearby well. Sandor found it fitted her better than the man's cock in her mouth.

"Come closer," he beckoned to her.

She let the wash down and carefully trod to him, trying to be brave, obviously expecting he would take her up on her earlier offer.

"Here," he said, surrendering her all the silver from his pockets.

The purse of the tourney winner would have more coin than that.

The girl did her best to hide her surprise and keep her face flat as she avidly took the coin and packed it away in her patched grey skirts. "What will it be, my lord? I'd rather if you choose between my mouth and the back door, if you know my meaning. I try to stay a maid in this business so I can marry a pig-herder one day. There is a handsome lad down in the village. They say he don't beat girls."

"Bugger off," he told her and he didn't have to say it twice. She grabbed the laundry and was about to bolt.

"Wait," he stopped her. "Don't talk about this," his eyes drifted back to… _Alayne Stone…_ as he said that. "Don't talk about any of this," he warned her, gesturing at her skirts filled with coin. "If you tell anyone, I'll kill you."

The girl curtsied much deeper and more dexterous than before and scurried off. She might make a good wife one day if the whoring did not do for her first.

Trumpets sounded, announcing the first match of the day, between the Brother Driftwood of the Quiet Isle and Ser Harrold Hardying, of the houses Hardyng, Waynwood and Arryn.

As an afterthought, the Hound donned an old green cloak of his over his armour before riding out into the field. He had worn it on the second day of the Dead Hand's tourney and he took it with him when he left the capital.

When he approached the lists, the ginger-haired knightly heap of dung who signed him up for the tourney directed Sandor to the other end than the one he would have wanted. The sun was in his eyes. The position would help explain his well-paid defeat. But as a result, he could still not see the face of Alayne Stone. He clamped the visor harder to avoid being blinded. It would do so that he could joust with precision, but he'd only be able to see the girl at the moment he clashed with his opponent.

The lad he should let win had not one, but _three_ sigils on his chest and shield; a more pretentious handsome toad than most. He also wore a favour on his pretty sword, a _blue_ ribbon.

In that instant, Sandor decided to knock down Ser Harry face forward in dirt as he had done with Jaime Lannister in King's Landing. Maybe they would have to pry open his falcon-topped helm with a hot poker if he was successful.

The trumpets blew again. Stranger snorted and carried his master down the lists; both man and beast were taken by the sheer pleasure of riding with abandon. Sandor's mind was firmly set on unhorsing Harry. But in the middle of the field, against all his expectations in the matter, _curiosity_ made him waver and look up and see…

 _Sansa bloody Stark._

His lance went into Ser Harry's gorget, piercing it like putrid flesh. The boy rolled in the dirt as Sandor had wanted. Blood gushed from the young ser's armour. _That_ sight was pretty, but entirely unintended.

 _Fastened as good as the whore's bodice,_ Sandor mused over the fact that he had most probably killed the boy by stupid chance, dismounting rapidly. _Why do they always let squires joust against men?_ He ripped his cloak, and pressed it hard on the boy's throat to stop the bleeding. The crowd cheered and roared. Someone called for the master, brought a pallet. Sandor walked absent-mindedly with the boy to some hideously large tent, as the young ser's blood seeped into his green cloak. The fabric became wrinkled as the shrivelled face of a crone.

Inside the tent, Sandor melted into the shadows.

Littlefinger was the first one to arrive, followed by the girl who had never been his daughter. "Can you make his dying longer?" Baelish asked the maester. "We need everyone to examine his wounds and see how this was not _murder._ "

Sandor felt cheated. From the remark it seemed that Littlefinger actually ordered the killing of the bloody squire for a few silver coins, and tricked the Hound into performing it. He regretted selling his services cheaply. Had he figured it out, he would have asked for gold. A life had to have a price.

"It can be done," the maester answered cautiously. "If I spare him the milk of the poppy. But the pain will be horrible, my l-"

"-There is no need for him to die a pretty death," Baelish advised, matter-of-factly. "He only has to die, eventually. And not a moment too soon."

"As does everyone," the maester murmured, nodding.

 _Sansa_ stared at the dying knight, not saying a word.

"Keep him alive," Baelish said and turned to leave. _Sansa_ wanted to follow, but he wouldn't let her. "Not you, sweet," he admonished her gently.

Sansa frowned first and then bowed her pretty head. "I understand, father. I shall stay and help nurse my betrothed. Lady Waynwood and Lord Yohn Royce will see we are not to blame."

 _Betrothed?_ Sandor mused. _Aren't you married to a dwarf? Or did someone kill him for you?_ He wished he was hired to perform that little service. He would have enjoyed it profoundly.

"Good girl," Baelish said and was gone.

Sansa smoothed her skirt and stood as far away from the dying knight as possible. The maester gave a sloppy excuse about finding some woman to wash the wound. Sandor's cloak was still firmly lodged in the gash and _no one_ thought to remove the armour. The boy breathed weakly, uttering little, sharp sounds.

"How can any death be pretty?" Sansa wondered aloud when she thought herself alone, and Sandor felt something in the place where his conscience used to be before he had conveniently murdered it.

The woman had to be precisely that woman, girl, wench, or future wife of a lucky pig-herder. She had the good sense of trying to remove the armour, but she was going to tear the boy's throat open by her clumsy execution of it.

Sandor sprang out of the shadows, helped, kept the wound closed.

"Did…" Sansa was telling him something, but for a few moments Sandor's hands were too full. He did not listen.

The washing wench opened Sandor's visor. That woke him up. He slammed it down. "Watch out if you want to keep all your fingers," he barked.

"Answer the lady," the wench insolently barked back. "She's asked you something five times. We are done here."

"Did your lance go where you wanted it to go?" Sansa repeated her question for a sixth time, in a painfully familiar, _tremulous_ voice behind his back.

"No," Sandor answered truthfully, realising that the polite bird omitted to call him either lord or ser. _Do you know me?_

"But how? Why?" Sansa asked, wringing her hands. "You… you… you are… you won a tourney… you must know better."

Of course Sansa knew him. Just as he had known her.

The wench had to finish Sandor off with her mouth. "His lance missed because he was looking at you, my lady. For the second time today." With an evil grin, the scrawny little bitch left the tent, left them alone.

Sandor wanted to drink himself into oblivion for the first time in years. He grabbed a jar with the milk of the poppy left by the maester for the moribund and was about to gulp it down when Sansa caught his armoured hand. "Is it true?" she asked softly and the tremor in her voice was of a different kind. It rang with… expectation.

"Yes," Sandor said tiredly and pulled his helm off, sick of pointless pretending.

"Brother Driftwood?" Sansa asked with suspicion.

He looked at her like a hawk and came one step closer, dragging his leg, waiting for her to avert her eyes from the ugly, old cripple that was now towering over her, and not for the first time. She never did. She studied him with a blank, bloodless expression on her heart-shaped face.

"I had to call myself some mystery shit," he explained. "There is a price on the Hound's head." Some bugger had stolen his helm from where the Elder Brother had piously buried it, and did worse than Gregor in the place called Saltpans. He wondered if Sansa knew and if she believed it.

"On the Hound's, but not on yours?" she asked carefully, her reason sharpened as the dagger he had put on her throat the last time they saw each other.

"Not my butcher's work," he shrugged, feigning indifference, making another step.

Sansa noticed the limp now and he hated the new look of pity in her eyes.

"I could still kill _you_ ," he rasped carelessly, clinging to the only thing he knew. Fear was respect.

"But you won't," Sansa said with more certainty than he sometimes possessed on the matter.

"Probably not," he conceded her a small victory. "I only kill red-heads," he clarified, taking a small lock of hair between his fingers.

"Do you… Do you only kiss red-heads as well?"

"I kiss willing wenches," he murmured without thinking.

Sansa's face was inscrutable.

"What about ladies?" she asked, looking up to him.

Her chirping was as annoying as he remembered it. His head hurt and he found no mocking remark to hurl back at her.

"Hop off, little bird," he chased her away. "Get the bloody maester if you want your _betrothed_ to live."

Sansa sighed and obediently walked out of the tent.


	2. Sansa

Warnings for attempted rape and gore

I find gallows humour more challenging from Sansa's (the victim's) point of view. The genre includes, per definition, that the victim of violence may joke or try to alleviate his or her own dire situation by witty remarks, or the dire situations may be morbidly funny, while retaining their seriousness. I tried to use a bit of both.

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 **Sansa**

"Brother Driftwood is _big,_ " Myranda Royce repeated tenaciously, for the _seventh_ time that evening. "And he did help save my sweet Harry after almost killing him. I say that makes him _gallant._ What do you say, fair Alayne?"

Randa pursed her lips indecently, bulbous and plump as her bosom. With no reason at all, Alayne Stone thought of her as an old hag. Worse, she imagined her head rotting on a _spike._ Sansa immediately blamed herself for the untowardness of her most discourteous and rude mental fabrication.

 _What is wrong with you?_ Sansa asked Alayne or Alayne, Sansa. The two have been at war in one girl, since a savagely _missed_ lance blow pierced poor Harry's armour; each with a battle cry of her own.

Winterfell! Sansa whimpered, riding to meet her bastard opponent. Gulltown! Alayne screamed heartily, unsaddling Sansa and making her land into a thickly woven, sticky, treacherous cobweb of lies. Mud sprayed Sansa's behind and her lady's armour. Alayne mocked Sansa for being green and having no place in a tourney. Sansa began crying and hid, leaving Alayne in front.

Until today Alayne did not care, not truly, if Randa was chubby or not, nor did she wonder how many name days her companion had seen. They were friends of sorts. Randa's forwardness concerning men amused Alayne, who slowly learned not to flinch at various advances she was subject to, but rather toy with them according to her needs and purposes. Men were simple. Much simpler than Sansa, the girl in hiding, had ever thought, and far less magical. A smile here, a bold word there, a bawdy understatement made innocently, and they would eat from Alayne's hand. _Like dogs_.

They rarely did so for Randa… Alayne's first explanation for it was deeply rooted in the belief of that other girl, Sansa, who had been told all her life how pretty she was. She must have had more success in her seduction games because she was more beautiful… After a while, Alayne found, and on this, Sansa agreed with her, that the main reason for men's continued interest in her was that she never acted on any of her forward remarks and maintained an equal, prudent distance from all of them.

In the Mother's house where she was raised, Alayne must have been taught that impropriety was a sin. Yet in the Vale the natural daughter of Lord Petyr Baelish soon learned to ignore this wisdom. Transgressions of the flesh were very common and no one was particularly shamed by them. Alayne never sinned beyond her little games, mainly because for Sansa, that girl in disguise, the notion of touching any man more than fleetingly was as appealing as eating a forgotten lemon cake full of maggots.

At times, Petyr's slobbery kiss tasting of mint, promising Winterfell, promising everything, could not be avoided. Sansa stiffened and let it be done, in fear of either angering or losing her protector. Alayne was not afraid. She would wriggle out of her father's lap like an eel, as soon as the first non-fatherly kiss was over, and run to some urgent castle business.

Randa did not share Alayne's calculation and prudence, nor Sansa's inhibitions. She found men tastier than any cake; young and old, big and small. She would lay with one before moving swiftly to another, much like the guests at Joffrey's wedding devoured noisily all seventy-seven courses in a row, before the king committed the utmost discourtesy of choking to death; spoiling the delicious meal and the wondrous festivity in his honour.

Joff's death should have been more discreet. A true king shouldn't have inconsiderately ruined the celebration of his people by dying. Sansa imagined him served as an elaborate, well-spiced main course at his own feast, so that no guest would be the wiser as to what had transpired, nor privy to the heinous murder of their beloved king.

There were places in the far North when men committed such unspeakable deeds, Sansa knew. Alayne didn't. Girls in the Mother's house in Gulltown were not told the scary stories about Skagos or the Rat Cook on the Wall before bedtime.

Meanwhile, Sansa wondered if anyone would die at her wedding to Harry the Heir. _Lady Waynwood for instance._ She would make a most ladylike elderly corpse. And she wouldn't be able to pry into Sansa's heartless marriage with her ward. Her dislike for the lady grew since Alayne met Harry, and had to put up with his demeaning treatment of her, only for being conceived on the wrong side of the blanket. Lady Anya had demanded Harry should like " _Alayne"_ in order to agree to their marriage _._ No one asked how Sansa Stark, the last scion of one of the Great Houses of the realm, felt about marrying an arrogant twat, half-Arryn at best, on his mother's side.

There were to be only three modest courses at Sansa's wedding. No poison would be served or worn in elaborate hairnets, and there would be no heads on spikes, no heads at all.

 _The queen was wrong,_ Sansa concluded, pondering her entire existence in the Vale, and Petyr's recent demand she should bewitch Harry. _If you use the weapon between your legs, you lose. It is when you only threaten to use it that you may win._ Alayne had Harry's interest when she _refused_ giving him her favour before the tourney and at the same time exposed her newly flirtatious beauty, hinting discreetly at their future union, from safe distance. Even so, the victory of her incomplete seduction was small and short-lasting. Men did not think with the ugly protruding bit they had between their legs all the time. And when they stopped, and that part of them turned plumper than Randa, they forgot women and did as they liked. With his mind set on glorious achievements in the field, Harry gave Alayne only a brief, perfunctory look before he rode out… and met his doom in the tourney.

His doom was called Brother Driftwood, or rather, Sandor Clegane. He had been looking at _Sansa_ during a pass in a joust and _missed_ the intended strike with his long tourney lance. Instead of unsaddling Harry, as he wanted, he nearly killed him.

Randa... She lay with anyone at will, and never gained anything from it, except… joy. In that sense, Myranda Royce was just like men. At times she thought with the wet softness women had between their legs. Alayne had discovered its existence, especially in the middle of the moon turn that passed between the two arrivals of her red flower. Sansa touched herself there at night and did not know what to think of it. It was… pleasantly disconcerting. On those days she thought most often of the cruel kiss in her past, the one that reeked of blood and not of mint.

Sansa was taught that a lady ought to let her husband do as he pleased and learn to love him with time. The queen completed her education by stating that if she could never love her husband, she would always love her children. Alayne, the bastard, noticed Randa liked more that men do as they pleased. She never married any of them or pronounced herself in love. Afterwards, she drank a stinky concoction called moon tea so that she wouldn't have any children, and much less love them. Sansa did not know what to make of that attitude.

The world stood upside down, wrought of lies and Arbour Gold.

Due to that, and despite their apparent friendship, the Lady Myranda Royce still did not know that it was not Alayne Stone, but Sansa Stark, marrying her sweet Harold Hardying. Provided she could stay present for her wedding and bedding. She had been Alayne for so long that she felt at times as if Alayne was taking over. That helpful, diligent girl who could avoid outrageous insults to her person, instead of freezing and letting her father kiss her at will.

"Since it is you and not I marrying Harry today," Randa remained true to herself and amazingly improper. "I might as well ask the mystery knight to show me his sword while Harry is showing you his… I shall require consolation for my loss."

The once credulous, timid girl called _Sansa_ did not believe Harry would be capable of showing her anything. _Not tonight._ He was bed-ridden; more dead than alive, according to the maester. It was a miracle he still drew breath.

When Sansa visited him in the morning, his face was equal part sunken and swollen, and somewhat splotchy. It was unkind to think so, but he… he looked as a strange, bulging mushroom or a poisonous dark red flower from the Neck. His sandy hair turned oily and golden like the morning contents of the chamberpot. His handsome facial features appeared more decayed than the rotting heads of Sansa's Father and septa Joffrey had made her look at years ago, mounted on spikes high above the battlements of the royal palace.

Sansa was sorry for Harry, but her sincere compassion always lessened when she thought of having to marry him. Than she only pitied herself. Perhaps any husband of hers was to be ugly and twisted, as a punishment from the gods for the sins of the old, stupid Sansa, who had been deceived by beauty.

She could not fathom why Lord Baelish insisted her marriage should take place only a day _after_ Harry's most grievous injury, nor why Lady Waynwood accepted the speed on behalf of her ward, who could apparently not even _talk_. Should he not speak to pronounce his marriage vows? Surely they should have waited until he recovered? And looked a bit less like a… like a _corpse._ Surely the tourney for places in Sweetrobin's guard of honour should have continued ? Alayne had worked for it so hard and Sansa was happy about it, a little. Now both ladies saw their efforts wasted.

Sansa wished she were elsewhere. In Winterfell… But for that she had to marry.

Didn't she?

Alayne Stone, on the other hand, felt obliged to continue the conversation with Randa. Neither Sansa nor Alayne were able to decide whether to consider Nestor Royce's daughter a friend or merely a different kind of foe.

"I do not think that the mystery knight is gallant," Alayne Stone offered bravely, in her best bastard tone of quipping with men. Suppressing the need for tremulousness in her voice, she carefully adjusted one of the ribbons on her white and grey wedding gown she and Randa had been examining for the past half an hour. The maids did a passable job in haste, Sansa noted dully. "Brother Driftwood must be a cold man. I would never give him my favour."

Alayne wouldn't, or maybe she would. It remained to be seen. But Sansa, Sansa had kissed him.

No, the mystery knight was most certainly a ruthless man. Or he would have said something about their kiss. It was not proper for a lady to bring forth such a topic from their past. She had hinted at it enough as it was, and he had refused to acknowledge it. Worse, he'd sent her away, deeming her unworthy of his attention because her hair was brown now… He said he only killed red heads, and the Hound only cared for killing people. Didn't he?

"Oh, it is not a ribbon I intend to give him," Randa spoke of Brother Driftwood with misty eyes as though he were a fluffy, crunchy cake… iced with the freshest lemons in the realm. "I shall ask him to give _me_ a favour. A big, sweet one."

Sansa immediately imagined Randa being attacked and eaten by a huge pack of wolves, and chastised herself for another impropriety.

 _I must be so tired._

She had remained sleepless during night, finishing the embroidery of the direwolf's head on her maiden's cloak. Towards the hour of the bat, in the dark of the night, her fingers and her sight faltered. The stitches became completely spoiled and ruined on one side of the wolf's head. The animal began resembling an ugly wild dog. Sansa hated her mistake with all her heart until she realised who it reminded her of. _Mangled. As…_

"You will never receive any sweet favours from Brother Driftwood either," Alayne affirmed with passion. "He will take what you give and leave you with nothing." _But a bloody cloak,_ Sansa finished inwardly. The offending garment was left under her summer silks in King's Landing when she ran away. She often wondered if anyone found it and what they thought of it… Maybe they washed it and used it for Ser Osney Kettleblack, after shortening it quite a few inches. No Kingsguard had been as tall as the Hound.

Tall was… pleasing to look at.

"Fair Alayne," Randa kept taunting her. "So innocent and so opinionated. How would you know that of our mystery knight of the Faith? He may well be the noblest warrior sworn to the Seven in the realm."

"He isn't," _Sansa_ said obstinately, betraying Alayne, leaving her behind. It was impossible to be Alayne Stone when Sansa Stark thought of Sandor Clegane. "He is cruel and wicked." She was angry with him now. Very angry even. For.. for coming back. For not coming back sooner. For kissing her. For not confessing he had kissed her and asking for her forgiveness. For not… _kissing her again…_

"Cruel?" Myranda licked her lips. "Now that is interesting. How did you learn this, sweet Alayne? Have you met him before?"

"There was a similar man tending to the garden of the Mother's house where I grew up." Alarmed by the suspicion in Randa's voice, Alayne woke and lied smoothly, or rather, wove truth and lies into a unique composition. The Hound did serve in a place where she had forcefully stopped being a child. Though he never busied himself with flowers. Gardeners had to eradicate the weeds mercilessly. Sansa tried to tell herself that this was almost like killing.

"Later he left and became a… a wandering septon," Alayne invented the rest. She supposed a man had to be a septon, if he was allowed to work in a Mother's house. "I mistook Brother Driftwood for this… pious gardener and I shared my understanding with him. He sent me away. That is _not_ a gallant way to treat a lady, despite my mistake."

"Poor Alayne." Randa sounded fascinated, examining Sansa's face very closely. "So flushed. I did not realise you were in love with a septon in Gulltown. I am so sorry that your septon did not return for you! Probably you were so shy towards him that he thought you never wanted him!"

 _In love?_

 _Wanting him?_

"If I may be excused, I should dress up for the wedding now," Sansa frostily interrupted the conversation.

"Indeed," Randa concurred, but the mischief never left her voice, fat like the rest of her. "I will leave you to it. I shall do the same."

On a second thought, Alayne's friend or enemy lingered at the door and yelled back at Sansa. "If you wish, we can swap when you are married. You could lend me Harry and I will borrow you Brother Driftwood. Maybe he will remind you of your septon in the dark."

 _In the dark every man is the Knight of Flowers._ Was it Tyrion who said something similar? Sansa could not recall with precision the dread of her wedding night with the Imp. Yet there was no such darkness in the world that could make Tyrion Lannister look less like a gargoyle in the eyes of Sansa Stark.

The Hound, however…

It was better not to think of how he looked to her.

Sansa shivered and put on her wedding gown. As of tomorrow, she would be a great lady again and have her own maids. Her lord husband would no longer insult her for being a bastard. She would be wedded and… most certainly not bedded.

If Harry tried anything in his wounded state, he might as well die from the effort as Randa's husband did, and not for any fault of Sansa's. The thought did not displease Sansa as it should. It was almost… refreshing and liberating. She only prayed to the gods that Harry's death during the consummation of their marriage, if it was fated, did not occur when he was inside her, but rather a little bit before or after. _Please, please, please, if I have to be bedded this time, let it not be horrible and sickening._

When Sansa emerged in the corridor, dressed for her wedding, she sensed him, though he hid in the shadows.

Brother Driftwood.

Sandor Clegane…

The _Hound_ had been stalking her since this morning, but he never showed himself or approached her. Yet she knew he was there. _Why?_

She held her maiden's cloak close to her body in both hands, wrapped tight in a bundle, as a shield. The wolves were brave. She would only unfurl it during wedding. Father… no, Lord Baelish said she should keep the secret as long as possible so that no one sent word to the Queen Regent. Not before she and her new husband would ride north…

 _Harry can't ride. He'll fall off the horse and break his neck if he doesn't die before that, in bed with me._

Heavy steps followed her from a prudent distance, not wishing to be seen. She bent, pretending to pull up her stockings, in order to look back. He stopped when she did. Today he was hooded _,_ not armoured, wearing brown. It made him look almost like the septon Alayne just invented him to be.

Sansa fancied herself back in the Red Keep. She was walking to her execution and the Hound was bid to accompany her. The morbid notion held more dignity for the daughter of Eddard Stark than the simple truth; being forced to marry, and below her station. The small Great Hall of the Royces, where her beheading was to be celebrated gaped open like a tomb. Behind it, there was no single grave, but a merry, crowded lichyard, with too many occupants. The entire castle, as well as the visitors who had come for the tourney, gathered to witness the union.

Alayne's father, Lord Baelish, waited for Sansa at the door. Harry was already in front. He was seated in _bed_ in front of a rather _drunk_ -looking septon. A pile of pillows was stashed behind the groom, helping him sit comfortably.

Sansa felt they could have at least made him occupy a _chair_ if he could not stand.

Apparently all her husbands were to be not only ugly, but also _short_. By nature or the condition they suffered from. Sansa would have preferred tall. Maybe for being tall herself.

"Is this wise, father?" Alayne whispered to Lord Baelish, as Sansa's decision to be brave faltered and broke into pieces. "Should we not wait?"

A bony arm coiled around her waist, squeezing it, nudging her forward. Mint on Alayne's father's breath smelled like rotting meat. Or maybe it was something else that stank of decomposition, but she could not say what. There were no tables with food yet. They would be brought in later, after the dance, for the feast. The dance was to be held outside, in the courtyard, benefitting from one of the last warm autumn days in the Vale. The so called Great Hall was too small to host it.

Alayne helped Sansa to wriggle out of the non-fatherly touch on the small of her back. She remembered different arms, that had manhandled her without the unnecessary exploration of her body, when the Hound was duty bound to lift her from bed or take her back and forth from her cage.

"Now, sweet," Petyr whispered to her. "Don't ruin everything now! You know that I know what is best for you. Harry and the Eyrie, and Winterfell, remember?"

"Of course, father," Alayne said dutifully.

"Today you look lovelier than your mother," Petyr told her dreamily and gently touched her cheek. Sansa bolted and walked to her personal headsman's block alone. Her upcoming marriage increasingly felt like imminent death. Yet it was easier to stand next to Harry than to Petyr in his kissing mood.

Once in front, Sansa dared a shy look at her future husband. He wasn't as repulsive as before. His eyes were glassy. He was pale… livid. He did not move at all.

He was… dead.

Why did Petyr want her to marry a deadman?

Sansa almost cried for all to see. Instead of a tear, a hysterical gasp escaped her mouth.

"Maidenly nerves," Petyr said out loud, nodding wisely to the castle audience.

Well, at least there would be _no_ bedding. That much was certain now.

Was it?

An instantaneous rapid recollection of all Sansa's misfortunes since she left her childhood home prevented her from instantly believing this just end of her forced wedding appointment. She strove to remain calm and keep a courtesy mask on her face.

The septon swayed left and right as though he were already dancing and not performing a holy rite. Between hearty hiccups, he held out a long parchment and read from it, proclaiming the invalidity of Sansa Stark's marriage to Tyrion Lannister, as per inviolability of her maidenhead that he himself had probed. Sansa was never subjected to any such inspection, so Petyr must have paid in gold for that assessment.

 _Or in wine._

Surreptitiously, she dared a look behind.

Petyr… he was very well dressed. Too well dressed even.

Dread mounted in Sansa's heart.

The septon… said something about marriage vows between her and Harry. Sansa unfurled her maiden's cloak and wrapped it around her own shoulders for protection. She hoped that her true sigil would miraculously give her strength to see the end of this awful day.

Shouts of surprise filled the Great Hall. Randa's was the loudest one.

 _Now she knows I never lived in the Mother's house._

Through all that, the cruel man whom she had kissed once stood in the shadows… He never made his way from the back rows to save Sansa or to kill those willing to hurt her. _A liar like everyone else._

Baelish and Lady Waynwood lifted Harry's corpse. Jointly, they helped the deadman remove Sansa's maiden's cloak from her shoulders, and place his cloak around his bride. Neither Sansa, nor any of them, bothered to clasp it.

Mortally offended, abandoned, the direwolf snarled on the floor. It had never looked more like a mad dog in the pit.

Harry's hands were ice cold and it was he that stank so much. Sansa stared at the septon, expecting some absolution. It never came.

"Lord Hardyng," the septon tried to say more, but the insistent hiccups countered his best intentions. "Well, never mind," he managed to squeeze out. "You are married."

"To the dance!" someone called.

Sansa resisted the urge to faint.

 _I married a deadman._ She laughed, panicking.

No one helped Harry anymore so his corpse… collapsed. Sansa stepped away daintily so as to avoid the impact.

"Oh no!" Lord Baelish implored. "He must have died from excitement!"

 _Isn't that what you wanted? Why admit the truth now?_

Lady Waynwood began crying. "My poor, poor Harry," she sobbed, "I trusted that your young wife would return to you the strength and the will to live… But you were beyond our help…"

"How dreadful!" Petyr said sadly. His eyes laughed. "And how inconvenient… His passing leaves my late wife's niece Lady Sansa Stark unprotected…"

The drunk septon attempted to wander off.

"Wait," Baelish commanded him brusquely. "Your service here is not over."

 _Not over._ Sansa drank in the words and her panic rose to unprecedented levels. _What else?_

"I cannot protect a traitor's daughter," Lord Baelish announced sadly. "But I shall move the mountains for my lady wife."

Myranda's father hurried to bring Petyr a cloak… Sansa did not have to look at it to know that it had a mockingbird on its back…

Sansa felt trapped as a little bird for true, understanding everything. She was never to marry Harold Haryding. Her short marriage to the deadman could be used to claim the inheritance of the Vale once Sweetrobin died from natural or less natural causes. _Sweetsleep. He has had more sweetsleep than he should since we left the Eyrie._ And Sansa would be shown a sword smelling of mint tonight …

 _Everyone says his finger is so little,_ Sansa thought desolately. _It shouldn't hurt._

The hope of avoidance of pain did not make the prospect any better. She gulped and looked forward. Desperate, she hoped for deliverance, beyond hope.

The drunk septon was no longer there.

"The septon…" Sansa said quietly, almost calling Littlefinger father, remembering in the last moment she should not do so because she was no longer Alayne and she would not be marrying Petyr had he been her father.

 _Or maybe I would._

Petyr truly did not care about _anything_. Except his own designs… Why did Sansa ever think any different?

"We'll find a tree with a face somewhere if we can't find a septon," Littlefinger cut off Sansa's timid attempt at freeing herself. "We'll carve the face and make the tree bleed if we have to."

 _I am not marrying him. I am not marrying him. I am not marrying him._

But she was. As always, she was…

The huge man in roughspun of the Faith finally stepped forward from the shadows, opening his way through the crowd by pushing men unceremoniously left and right, not paying any attention if they were highborn or not.

 _He will save me now._ Sansa hoped fervently. _He will kill them all and take me home._

"I am a septon if you need one," he rasped against her wishes. "My lord," he added as an afterthought, but the usual submission that went with the title was not present in his voice.

"You?" The words left Sansa's mouth unbidden. "You said you were a killer." Did she just say that? How could she have possibly said that?

Sandor Clegane was surely dressed like a member of the Faith today, with his maimed face well hidden under the cowl. The habit was big enough for him, and it wouldn't have been if he had stolen it.

Fortunately, no one paid attention to the soft voice of the unwilling bride. Petyr, normally so _perspicacious,_ did not even pay attention that Brother Driftwood and this _septon_ were one and the same man, who killed Harry. Or maybe he did, but he did not care when a situation played out well for his purposes.

"Thank you, brother," Petyr said heartily. "As I promised you before, you shall be well rewarded for your efforts."

Sandor Clegane rasped on where the drunk septon had stopped. "You, Lord Baelish, take this widow here, Lady Stark, Hardying, Lannister, all that, to wife, is that the way of it?"

Petyr agreed to the rudely made proposition with a noble nod.

"And you, girl, you want to inherit Casterly Rock, and the Vale, on top of Winterfell, and marry _him_?"

 _Casterly Rock?_ Sansa hadn't thought that far. But if Cersei was queen and if Ser Jaime could not marry for being Kingsguard… And if Tyrion… died?

Sansa looked down. A steely something was born, or maybe it just woke, in her soul. A direwolf snarled there, and it was a much more ferocious animal than any other present. A real one, not merely stitched to a piece of fabric.

"Look at me," the septon said. No… he implored.

Sansa had to obey. Under the cowl she met a pair of changed eyes. Concerned and worried.

 _For me._ She marvelled at the discovery.

"Of course she wants to," Baelish said in her place. "She is just too excited. It is shocking for a maiden to lose one husband at the altar…"

 _Why do you speak for me?_ Dismayed, Sansa open her mouth to say something imprudent-

"Alright," the false septon grunted enthusiastically. "You are man and wife then! Who am I to decide otherwise? To the dance!"

Sansa had never been more disappointed in her life. _And how can you say this? You of all men?_

The false septon even began _scribbling_ frantically on a piece of parchment, using the quill forgotten by the drunkard. Sansa imagined he was duly taking note of her marriage on the same parchment which proclaimed she was a maiden, sealing her doom.

Angry, silent as a tomb, Sansa gave her hand to yesterday's father, her new lord husband, and let Petyr lead her to the courtyard, where the dance was to begin. Petyr soon left her side, to receive congratulations from the people in the Vale.

"The mystery knight does look like a real septon now, I'll give you that, Lady _Stark,_ " Myranda approached her from nowhere and said naughtily. "But since you are not Alayne, I will bet that he is no more a septon than you've ever been the Lord Protector's daughter."

"He has become one," Sansa said sadly, too weak to twist the truth. "He wouldn't lie about who he is. He never bothered before."

To Sansa's surprise, Myranda flashed her the most sincere smile since they had known each other. With her chubby body, she spun on her heels. An ugly red-haired knight who called himself Ser Shadrich was caught up in her plump, stifling grasp. He was the first one in the queue of men traditionally asking the bride for a dance. The two twirled with utter lack of grace, as the couple of funny dwarves who had ridden a pig and a dog at Joff's wedding, staggering and toppling over one another.

This left another man in front of Sansa, asking for a dance. One Sansa did not want to see. Not now. _How could you?_

"Will the blushing bride grace the humble servant of the Seven with this dance?" a voice rasped, mocking her gravely. Yet it may have been the most courteous phrase he had ever directed to her.

She discovered her cheeks _were_ warm, just as he said.

He still carried a sword on his back, under the clothing of the Faith. She wondered if he slept with it. With his real weapon, not the other one Myranda wanted to see.

Curious, she put her hand forward. He did not need any further encouragement. He pulled her to himself and grabbed her hand and waist to lead. They spun around. A little bit of space remained between them. The grip on her body was firm, but not untoward, just as she remembered him from most occasions when he guided her to places. Those few others… when they were alone and he was angry and frightening her… she would not think of them now because it would inevitably lead to thinking of his kiss. The smell of him was wonderfully warm and non-herbal. Sansa breathed it in, filled her lungs with that unknown wonder and relaxed with a sigh. She was safe from Petyr for the time being.

He danced _well_ for a man of his size, a man Sansa had never seen _dancing_ in their long time together in King's Landing.

"I didn't know you could dance!" She exclaimed after a while, completely flushed, feeling almost happy on her marriage day.

Her only reply was a boar-like grunt and a squeeze of her waist, harder than necessary now and… pleasant in a quaint fashion. She should have known better than to try and talk to him. Anything she said displeased him. That had not changed, unlike his eyes…

"I didn't think you'd ever become a septon either," she confessed, contrite, immediately regretting her poor attempt at conversation, wishing to dance on in silence.

"I did not," he reacted with indignation.

"But then-"

"You are not married to him. They will discover it on the morrow."

"But if he-"

"-beds you it will be called rape. You can have him sent to the Wall for it. Let him freeze to death. The lords of the Vale love him not. Those he bought may relish keeping his coin, without him to collect interest on their debt. Not being married, you can still marry anyone you want."

The Hound didn't care if another man bedded her. That hurt Sansa and it should not have. They were in a dark corner now. The courtyard was full of dancing couples and no one would see them. Sansa's heart was pounding.

 _Will you kiss me now? Will you kill me, despite not having red hair?_

The Hound merely released her and her heart fell.

"Here." Instead of killing her or kissing her he showed her a letter from the Elder Brother of the Quiet Isle, swearing a holy vow that Sandor Clegane the Hound had been on the Quiet Isle for a year. In that time, he hadn't visited Saltpans, nor did he swear septon vows. Under the beautiful handwriting of the real septon, there was a written confession scribbled in haste and signed by Sandor Clegane… In it, he confessed he had just falsely married Lord Petyr Baelish and Sansa Stark. And that he did it because after his stay on the Quiet Isle, even he, with his reputation, found _ungodly_ that a man who agreed to marrying a woman to a corpse would then take her for himself, over that same corpse, while it was still fresh.

"You can write?" she wondered in her highborn arrogance.

"Guess what, I can read as well," he said scathingly. "Not that you can wrap your bird's mind around anything.'

"Why are you doing this?" Sansa wrung her hands. She would _never_ understand the Hound. Maybe she was stupid as he said. Her head turned uselessly, trying to find an explanation.

"I won't tell you if you don't know already," he barked. "I am going. I'll make a copy of this for every high lord of the Vale before I leave."

"Going?" Sansa protested vehemently. "Again?"

"What do you mean, again?" he seemed as confused as she was now.

"I don't want your letters," she refused him.

"Than I shall take them and leave you to your lord husband," he replied cruelly. "At least he is a bit more virile than the first one they found for you today. Pardon my untimely interruption." Despite the anger in his words, he did not move to leave.

Sansa realised her hand was on his shoulder. She never knew when it ended up there.

"Dance with me some more," she invited him weakly… Her knees softened and her body hurt all over. She could find no explanation for what he did for her, nor for what she was doing now, but all of a sudden she knew exactly what she wanted. And maybe she could have it, this once. "Dance with me as if I was your wife," she pleaded.

"You are not…" he murmured. "If you were, I…"

 _Would you want me to be?_ She should be appalled by the notion, but it only hardened her resolve to impose her will on him in the matter of dancing, if she could.

"As if I was, please," she insisted, trailing her arm from his massive shoulder to his exposed neck under the habit, offering him her other hand for the taking. "Can't I dance with whom I will on my marriage day?" she pouted, but her voice rang very deep and profoundly melodious, not just soft and sweet as it was by nature.

Far from them, in the lit part of the courtyard, her would-be lord husband never danced. He remained engaged in conversation with various lords of the Vale. Sansa should be privy to its content, but after being forced to marry a deadman, she could not bring herself to care.

"If you were my wife," Sandor Clegane rasped into her ear. "I wouldn't let you dance with anyone else on our marriage day."

"Then don't," Sansa said simply.

They never stopped dancing. She realised that his grip became as she may have wanted it from the start, hard and unyielding, waking the wet softness in her core. The space between their bodies vanished by magic. Her breasts, exposed on top in her wedding dress, touched the rough wool of his clothing. She looked under his cowl, searching for that changed expression in his eyes, until she found it. Her heart raced madly and their breaths mingled. The music was a winged being, lending them wings in return. Sansa's feet flew over the mud dirtying her silvery slippers and the pale hem of her wedding gown.

There had been one animal fiercer than the direwolf in the past. _The dragon._ It had wings and more heads in stories and tales… Maybe she and the Hound were like a dragon together. Strong and free. Sansa had never danced so much or so fine in her life.

A raucous voice called for the bedding. _Lyn Corbray? Another Littlefinger's puppet._ Expectedly, Sansa was stripped of her wings and her dreams and brought to the hard ground. Lady Waynwood passed by, carrying a significant pouch of coin. Her cooperation in Sansa's marriage did not come cheap by the looks of it.

At the end, Sansa had something to tell to the Hound, breathless and flushed, before she lost the nerve and was carried away by the lewd wedding guests. "It if please you, don't dance with Lady Myranda Royce while I am gone."

It was not good enough, she had to say more.

"Don't… don't show her your sword."

"Why not?" he was… very uncertain and oddly polite.

His hesitation soothed her. He could be… _gallant_ as Randa had said. He had just shown it more than well.

"Because my heart will hurt if you do," she announced with unprecedented warmth in her new womanly voice.

He had nothing to say to that.

Having said her farewell, Sansa felt almost ready for what was to come, though perhaps not for the thin little man who would be carried naked to the bedchamber after her.

"Bed them!" the crying was shrill now.

Why didn't everyone have the decency to die just like Harry, and leave Sansa to dance in peace? It was… it was the most wondrous sensation Sansa experienced, since she was a little girl and had a head full of dreams.

More manly hands groped her, robbed her from the Hound, from her dancing endeavour and new sweet memories; more arms belonging to _wrong_ men. Sansa let them do and hid inside. She imagined herself in Winterfell… She was ten. She was a child again and she would be safe.

Soon she ended up in the bedchamber that was to be hers and Harry's, naked as on her name day. The room was stripped of everything, except the bed and the bedding. There was no table, no chair, no logs to be put in the hearth, no fire. Nothing she could use as a weapon.

"No," she sighed helplessly, regretting all her actions. Instead of dancing she should have begged Sandor Clegane to save her. She should have seduced him and pleaded with him to kill Petyr for her. He had promised to do that once, didn't he? Sansa could ask Alayne for help, Alayne could be forward enough if she wanted. Just in the right amount, to secure the Hound's help….

Instead, stupid old Sansa just wanted to dance. She let the Hound see her real, confused feelings towards him, and she must have sounded indifferent about the prospect of her imminent bedding. She realised the Hound must have thought she was not a maiden… when he proposed to her she should use being bedded by Petyr to get rid of him. What was a bedding to the Hound? He must have done _that_ many times. If Petyr's entire marriage arrangement was dishonourable, why not the paper about her maidenhead?

Harry and the Eyrie. And Winterfell. And Casterly Rock.

Sansa seethed at the injustice of it all. Her anger sank all the way down to the steel in her. She had almost forgotten she had it, but there it was, undeniable. It had always been there, waiting for her to find it.

There was no weapon, but there was a window.

The blushing bride wrapped a thin, white sheet around her chest, so as to cover her modesty, but left the shoulders bare. Her legs were equally unburdened from her knees down, very much on purpose. As ready as she would ever be for her own _bedding,_ she leaned languidly against the sill of the open window. Some drunken song about knights and fair maidens rang in the courtyard where the dancing continued. Sansa allowed herself to listen to it and sighed only once. The evening had been entirely too beautiful to end up with her being deflowered by Petyr.

Littlefinger did not tardy. Nor did he waste his time by calling Sansa to join him in bed. He hurried to his innocent wife.

When he was close enough, it was his creation, Alayne Stone, that forced Sansa's head to tilt and her lips to part seductively.

"Cat," Petyr breathed out, "you are so pretty for me."

Petyr lifted his arms to embrace her, leaned in to kiss her, naked and unarmed.

Before he could do any of it, Alayne wriggled out of another unwanted embrace with months of practice, and gave Petyr a good, healthy push in the back.

Yet it was not Alayne, but Sansa Stark who planted her leg under both of Petyr's… just as her siblings and Theon had done to Sansa in Winterfell, making her land ungraciously into mud or snow. It was the first time in her life she succumbed to repeating that most unladylike gesture.

Petyr's scream of betrayal was muffled by the song.

Maybe life wasn't one, but his existence surely ended on a happy note.

Sansa wondered absent-mindedly if Harry's corpse was still in the Great Hall, and if she had to attend both Harry's and Petyr's funerals now, as their grieving widow.

"You were right, you know," Sansa said flatly, looking down, through the window. "Widowhood becomes me."

From the highest room in the highest tower of the Gates of the Moon, Petyr's body looked like a black…

Pulp.

 _Harry's corpse was prettier,_ Sansa concluded faintly. Her strength began abandoning her from the terrifying sight. Killing was sweeter than it should have been. _I did this._ _How could I?_ She had no answer for herself. Tears sprang forward and flooded her eyes, blinding her.

The steel in her became mellow, melting like hot iron to be worked on by a smith.

Sansa Stark collapsed on the floor, in a heap of trembling nerves, flesh and bone.


	3. Sandor II

Thanks, Topshelfcrazy, for everything.

New Year seems like a good time to finish all old stories and this one seems like the easiest place to start.

The last bonus point in this very old genre writing challenge organised by ladytp on LJ last year, was that Sansa and Sandor leave the Vale together.

Warning for morbid and grotesque content, in line with the attributed genre "black comedy".

Warning for purposeful departing from the genre at the end, into a more personal vision of how SanSan might work.

 **Sandor**

He stood at the base of the tower with four skins of wine; three still full and only one empty.

He should be drunk by now instead of sniffing after Sansa.

Tenacious like a dog, unwilling to let go of a bone that was never thrown to him...

Sansa, the blushing bride, pleasing her new husband in their bedchamber.

Whose heart would hurt if the Hound sought another woman after her wedding feast.

What was it to her and what was it to him?

 _Nothing._

And yet there he stood under the bloody tower; angry like seven hells burning in unison.

 _What are you waiting for, dog, that she comes to the window and screams for help?_

 _She won't. She'll give Littlefinger what he wants._

 _It's what she always does._

 _It's what_ _ **you**_ _told her she should do._

 _Or she wouldn't survive in court for long._

 _Like you gave your kennelmasters what they wanted before running away, more deftly than her, for all your love of honesty._

The Hound had always played his role, impassive and feared. Behind the mask, fruitless anger boiled. The man who should be there was burned.

Wasn't he?

He realised he had been studying the rough masonry of the tower as a way up like a dangerous madman. Combing his long hair over his scars with his empty sword hand, he laughed dryly; resolving to continue drinking.

He never opened another wine skin.

There was the stair as well, behind the main castle entrance. He could go up and reach Sansa's bridal chamber. There weren't that many guards on duty; he could kill them if they tried to stop him.

 _I'm my own dog now. I don't guard doors._

Yet he didn't turn back to drinking and kept standing at the bottom of the buggering, bloody tower like a king of fools.

Unable to wait at her door and _hear_ her song when she gave it to her new husband.

Even less able to leave and forget her for good-

-A corpse almost killed _him_ falling from above, like a rock thrown off a catapult.

Reflexively, he jumped away, swallowing, ready to see Sansa's lifeless body, waiting for the pain to consume him before numbness came; atrocity was the rule, anything else was an exception.

How many times did he stop her from falling in the Red Keep? On the battlements, on the serpentine, on the roof… How many times did she stand alone on some high place pondering to take her own life? He didn't know...

And now he wasn't there.

He forced himself to look at the corpse.

The ashen grimace of the former master of coin stared at Sandor amidst ruptured wine skins. Red wine, dark as blood, flooded Littlefinger's expensive, embroidered doublet made of cloth-of-gold.

 _What a waste,_ the Hound thought of the wine, forgetting his anger and his carefully nourished pride in being feared.

His heart flipped, turning upside down.

And Sansa was alone.

Running to the castle door, he yelled at the first pair of guards he saw, "Your master's drowning! That way! Fast!"

It wasn't a lie. He just omitted to mention that Littlefinger was already dead.

He pointed back and the gnats ran off like rabbits, not questioning his words, trained to obey their betters or anyone able to convincingly bark an order.

The Hound excelled in it.

He jumped the stairs four by four and broke Sansa's door down.

It wasn't his fault if they had flimsy carpentry in the Gates of the Moon.

The little bird lay on the floor in front of the open window.

The noise the Hound made stirred her awake. Sansa grasped the cold stone wall for support and rose to her feet. Pale and collected, she leaned against the dark window frame. The whirling, freezing wind of the Vale twirled a lavish curtain around her figure. She was… wrapped in flowers.

 _Beautiful._

"You pushed him," the Hound stated the truth as he saw it.

"He fell," Sansa countered weakly.

"Did he?" Sandor retorted mockingly. "Will the lords of the Vale believe you?"

"Why not? They believed me before, when Aunt Lysa was murdered, that it was her favourite singer, Marillion, and not Petyr who did it. I lied so well that Marillion lost his eyes and his fingers for the crime he never committed before the sky took him from his cell… Why would the lords doubt my word?" Her laugh was bitter, diminishing her beauty. She schooled her face back into perfection and paused. "Why are you here?"

 _Because I couldn't be elsewhere._

"Why not?" He rasped back. "You danced with me all night as if you were _my_ wife. You even warned me against fucking some wench. So I reckoned I could pay you a visit when your _husband_ was done _._ "

It wasn't what he'd thought at all. But it was something to say and it explained his presence.

Forced to consider _what_ he thought, by the power Sansa's scrutiny always wielded over him, he concluded that he hadn't been thinking. He just acted; it was his way to get even with the world. Thinking was luxury. In battle, it meant death.

"I never got that song," he continued rudely, needing to stop thinking again, lacking the helping hand wine could provide.

 _She's older now. She'll understand._

He would be good to her.

Gregor didn't burn his cock.

Sansa's face froze and fell.

After a passing grimace of deep disappointment and shock, her features were perfect again, impassive and bloodless.

But instead of giving him what he said he wanted, she leaned gallantly over the windowsill, into the dark void where death awaited in a pond of stinky wine and rotting flesh.

The Hound was several steps too far, at the bloody door-

-"No!" He heard himself scream.

Leaping desperately forward, Sandor caught Sansa's legs before the little bird flew after the mocking one towards the muddy ground; dead as any other woman he killed - her perfect shape a ruin like his face.

Death either pleased the Hound or meant nothing.

Except Sansa's.

He'd known it for long, ever since he prevented her from pushing Joffrey down from the battlements of the Red Keep. She would have died with Joff or on the next day, at the henchman's block. He couldn't accept it.

"Let me go," she tried to kick him with her long legs, despite that she was helpless in his grip and hanging upside down.

The waves of her hair streamed like a bright red river against the dark tower wall, glimmering in the moonlight.

"No," he denied her death wish in a calmer tone, pulling her back up to the chamber against her will.

She calmed down, breathed…

...and immediately bolted towards the free fall when his grasp on her lessened.

"No!" He implored, seizing her waist.

She smelled of his past dreams and went limp in his arms like a dying flower.

"Will you let me go after taking your song?" She whispered against his shoulder. "Or will you drag me with you and force me to do _your_ bidding every day? Will you make me recite the pretty words to you? Those that you might want to hear?"

There was pain in the Hound's throat. He had nothing to say to her on that.

So he buried his face in her hair.

Her throat pulsated and then stilled next to his nose.

He spied her eyes from his new hiding place among her curls. The strange light in them, that was there on her wedding feast, when they had been dancing, when she'd asked him to dance with her as though she were his wife, had vanished.

She was at his mercy…

…and she bolted for that window again as soon as his hold on her diminished.

He should say something to stop her from trying to kill herself, but he had no words. So he just hauled her over his shoulder like a sack of grain, carrying her downstairs, compelled to act instead of talking.

It was easier that way.

Only the lightness of her body revealed she wasn't a corpse; the dead were heavier. Her surrender was another piss poor lie of hers, lasting only until her next opportunity to fly away.

Hop off, vanish, die...

He had no notion where he was taking her or what he would do with her beyond the certainty that he couldn't let her die. And if he _left_ her in the Vale, she _might_ be blamed for Littlefinger's murder. Maybe her frail little lies wouldn't save her this time.

"The lady's gone!" Someone already bellowed from above.

"Didn't she also kill King Joffrey?" A screeching woman's voice asked from afar.

The walls of the castle seemed hollow and rang with dull sounds.

Heavy steps. Boots. Men, approaching fast.

In order to fight, he would have to let Sansa go.

 _Too much of a risk._

He decided to hide. There was a large, heavy door nearby. He opened it with ease, but without breaking it, needing to close it again.

The room was very dark and its width familiar.

It must have been the Great Hall, the bloody place where Sandor had performed Sansa's fake wedding to Baelish, putting up a mummery that he was a septon.

In the absence of light, he realised that Sansa didn't scream, without him having to threaten her. His company must have been less terrible than that of the men of the Vale.

This was soothing and pleasing.

"Not in here, please not in here!" she suddenly pleaded, possessed by a new horror. "Rather in the stable than here."

"What in seven hells are you talking about, girl?" he snarled, not understanding.

She whimpered uselessly, unable to reply to that. Her courtesy failed her like before, when faced with his loud rage, but it would always come back.

He didn't know what angered him more, her crying weakness and fear of him, or her rare ability to regain composure in his intimidating presence and _stop_ being frightened.

In the dark, the Hound heard a woman moan.

Sansa became dead silent.

Someone else lit a candle at the other end of the hall when the whining increased.

The small flame illuminated the buxom Lady Royce, impaling herself on the handsome corpse of Sansa's first husband in the Vale, Harry Something, the one she married before Baelish. The dead good ser was being mercilessly desecrated in his final rest, on the bed where Littlefinger and his friends had propped him so that a mockery of the holy marriage rites uniting him to Sansa could take place.

Sandor impassively considered the scene, taking note of a new possibility offered by the familiar stiffness of death.

He would have never thought of it.

Sansa looked shocked to the extreme.

"I don't think he would mind if he was alive," he tried to explain helpfully to Sansa how a man's mind worked, wishing to alleviate her discomfort.

She slapped him and then began to scream in earnest.

At least she was so appalled that she gave up trying to run away from him and kill herself.

The man holding the candle in the dark was the drunken septon who'd married Sansa to the corpse. Who had then passed out so thoroughly that no one could find him when Baelish declared _he_ would marry Sansa. And Sandor decided to pose as a servant of the Faith so that Sansa's union with Littlefinger would be a lie, if she so wanted.

The true septon looked much more sober now, and appeared honestly disturbed by the sight of a lady noisily fucking a corpse.

"By the Seven," he half cursed and half prayed. "This is a sin."

"Shut up," Lady Royce was not easily distracted in her endeavour. "My decrepit husband died in our marriage bed while he was in me, and it was my duty to abide by that. Why should this be any different? It's good for me and it can't hurt him."

Harry Something, proclaimed dead by the imprecise science of the maesters, drew an uncertain, wheezing breath. His stiff muscles tensed.

"A miracle!" The septon shrieked between the hiccups that suddenly seized him.

"Yes," Myranda Royce couldn't agree more. "My sweet Harry." She kissed the boy sloppily on his pretty mouth.

Sansa was at the door, trying to pry it open.

"Where are you going?" Sandor grabbed her wrist.

"Away!" This time she kept kicking him with her feet. "Let me go."

Faced with the futility of her resistance, she stilled, waiting for her next opportunity.

"I thought you'd want to go North," the Hound mentioned with indifference.

Her calm suddenly had a different quality to it.

"At the price of the song you were asking for?" She inquired after a while.

He couldn't answer. Maybe. Maybe not. Most probably not. He would take her there anyway. His anger returned. Why did she have to demand answers? He wasn't her dog! Couldn't she see on her own how it was with him when she was concerned?

She took his silence as the confirmation.

"It is a trade I shall not make, my lord," she shook her head sadly. "It appals me to sacrifice my honour for the service of your protection. And I also fear that my poor father would turn in his grave if he could see me concluding such an agreement. I am a lady, but not of ill repute."

"And I'm a man, not a septon," he reacted. "What do you want from me? To geld myself?"

He could promise her he'd never touch her with impropriety if she left the Vale with him, but this could be a lie. He didn't want to betray her trust. Yet she looked broken, as if he had already betrayed her by his honesty.

She stared at the septon, and then at Sandor. Her gaze changed, from the look of defeat to one he could not place. She pointedly avoided acknowledging her second husband. Dead and resurrected, Harry was thrusting at will into a most accepting lady, not minding anyone's presence.

 _So the wound I gave the boy in the tourney wasn't that grievous._

This was pleasing on one hand, because he never intended to kill Harry. But on the other hand, it was a warning. For the second time in his life he was acutely aware that despite all his strength and skill, he didn't fight with precision when his mind was on Sansa.

He had to forget her.

 _But why should I?_

He didn't want to forget her.

He stared at Sansa and then at the septon, avoiding observation of the happy fucking couple just like Sansa did. He didn't want Sansa's heart to hurt from him eyeing a different pair of teats, if that was also a part of her strange plea to him concerning women.

"Septon Garth," she addressed the man of the Faith swiftly and diligently, "I have to travel far with this…"

 _Not a ser,_ he thought angrily.

"… this _man_ and I fear for my honour and good name. I cannot share the perils of the journey without him being honour-bound to respect and protect me."

The Hound could promise the latter blindfolded.

 _I will respect and protect you._

But he couldn't swear that he'd never, under any circumstance, act on his desire for her.

The septon was dumbstruck, staring rudely at his scars, when the full extent of what Sansa was proposing dawned on Sandor.

"You don't mean this," his rasp was barely audible. "If you… if we say the marriage vows then you can only get rid of me if you are widowed. And killing me won't come easy. Might be you'll die before me."

He would hate it, but it was a possibility. Young frail ladies died of cold and other grievances of the body.

 _Or in childbed…_

"If you cannot vow to protect my honour from yourself," Sansa sighed, shaking her head with sorrow, "then I can't agree to go with you willingly without the blessing of the gods."

The former corpse grunted like a content boar in the background. Sansa looked as if she might vomit.

Sandor placed himself in front of her, drawing himself to his full height, intent on sparing her the view.

"Is it always so awful?" she breathed out.

"What's so terrible about it? They're both for it," the Hound explained, not seeing her difficulty.

With a corpse… well… that was indeed unappealing. The Hound wanted to fuck a woman, not a marble statue.

Nor a trembling innocent girl at his mercy... Unlike Gregor.

But the fuck they were forced to witness looked like any other right now. There was nothing wrong with it.

Sansa frowned, extremely unconvinced.

"Could you promise you'd be gentle?" she asked timidly.

His head began to hurt. He wished to be angry and failed. This thankfully angered him, but not enough.

"Might be I can't do that," he rattled with only half of his usual bark. "I'm not known for tenderness."

"But you _were_ gentle when you cleaned the blood from my lip. When you stopped me from pushing Joffrey to his death. And on a few other occasions."

 _Do you remember that? What other occasions?_ He couldn't recall any. But he remembered with clarity his assault on her after the battle, and regretted it ever since.

The septon cleared his throat.

"I should very much like to sleep in bed soon, my children, so we should finish here," he spoke through his nose, blowing it noisily into his brown sleeve. "Before you make a final decision, I feel that it is my duty to warn you that the holy vows include a promise to love each other, that should not be given lightly according to the blessed truth of our Faith. This makes no matter when alliances are made between the great houses, but you seem to be entering the holy marriage freely, my children, so you should be aware of it."

"I'll swear anything you like," Sandor grunted at no one in particular. "As long as it doesn't involve any _knightly_ vows."

"What if I demanded you took knightly vows before marrying me?" Sansa provoked him. "If it were a condition? Would you stand vigil in a sept and be anointed with seven oils?"

He would _never_ do anything of the kind, but he couldn't snarl the response at her, hesitating.

"Let's leave," he boomed. "This farce isn't necessary."

"Then swear that you'll protect my honour from yourself," she demanded.

"I'd rather confess my undying love for you," he snarled back.

Something woke in her eyes that wasn't there before. Something he didn't think her septa could have taught her. An expression he never saw on a woman when looking at _him_. Something very much alive; disturbing and disturbed at once.

It wasn't a sweet lie. It was a little truth of how she might feel, and it was there for him; he was the cause of it.

It was what he wanted.

"Would you?" she wondered about him swearing his love to her, in an unknown, deeper voice.

He nodded dumbly, wishing to kill someone, drink himself to death and pass out in a ditch.

Predictably, he was unable to kill _her_ , just like on all previous occasions when he'd considered it. If he killed the septon, he would ruin his chances to… to marry Sansa. And he was far too sober for speaking freely, from his heart, like that night when he'd told her the truth about Gregor.

Maybe he could use the words she'd said to him after her wedding dance. They were better than his.

"My heart would burn like in seven buggering, bleeding hells if Littlefinger got that song," he rasped deeply, staring at the ground, feeling the burden and the imaginary itching of his scars. And most of all the shame of his unrequited desire for her.

He was ugly. It was a simple truth. A highborn, beautiful lady like Sansa wouldn't overlook it for a fuck.

But she had touched his face, not having to do so and he couldn't forget it.

 _Right, dog, out of pity._

 _But Jonquil loved Florian and he was homely._

 _Right, in a_ _ **song**_ _._

Why couldn't he leave her alone? It was what he should do. He'd succeeded in forcing himself to part with her before.

Her hand caught his chin, not lifting it up as he often did to her. On the contrary, her touch forced him to look at her pale, lovely face, just below his.

"I never thought you cared," she declared expansively, looking happier than he had ever seen her.

Her lips were so close to his. Should he…? Dare he…?

"But then," Sansa's joy disappeared faster than it came, "I was a fool who didn't expect so many things that came to pass."

"My children," the septon drawled helplessly, waving his index finger. "One depravity is quite enough." He gestured at the lusty lady of the castle and Harry Something. "Should we not begin with the vows?"

Someone had to do the dirty work first.

Someone always had to do what pretty knights frowned upon.

"This isn't for the eyes of a proper lady on her wedding day," Sandor judged, reminded of their unwanted company, and proceeded to push the bed in which the happy couple continued rutting out of the Great Hall and to the far end of the now-empty corridor. The love birds never complained, moaning worse than cheap whores.

Some men paid to watch, just like they gave out gold as a reward to those who did their killing.

"A good fuck!" The Hound shouted heartlessly. "Come and have a look!" He underlined his point before backing to the Great Hall.

He was for doing, not for standing idle.

But with some luck, any sleepless soul in the castle would come and watch, even those searching for the Littlefinger's grieving widow, who was about to remarry over his still warm body.

 _More stupid than he thought he was._

The Hound's verdict sounded like something a skilled stonemason could carve on the grave of the late master of coin in exuberant letters.

In the Great Hall, Sansa spoke quietly with the septon, making him drink some water.

Ensuring he wouldn't pass out again before marrying the Hound and his lady.

"Where were we?" Sandor asked flatly.

"The vows," the septon replied with frugal devotion. "And a cloak, if it pleases you."

There were white curtains on high windows, stained with red wine during the feast. Sansa was contemplating them.

Her look was his command.

So he draped her, and promised to love her, and thought she said the same to him, reciting her pretty words... She surely knew them by heart by now, saying them for the fourth time. The holy rites of marriage passed in a haze of hope and distracting fear. Was he going to do this to her?

 _Why not? She proposed marriage._

But it was he who asked her for a dance. Without his initiative, she would have never had the opportunity to express her wish for him to twirl her around as though she were his wife.

The septon wrote them a paper saying they were married and all Sansa's previous marriage alliances null and void.

Then he counselled them to go elsewhere to seal the union. "Have mercy on me, sweet children," he finished, "I took a vow of chastity."

"I know where they won't look for me," Sansa suddenly whispered like a confident, conspiring noblewoman. Sandor had difficulties recognising her.

"This is just Alayne," she explained shyly, noticing his surprise. "The role Petyr made me play. Come."

She made him return to her bridal chamber by another, shorter flight of stairs, knowing her way in this castle much better than him.

Once they were there, Sansa busied herself throwing into a corner all the decorations and tokens prepared by Littlefinger for his special night; food, wine, mint sweets, jewels, silks and furs.

The Hound put back in place the door he had broken down, as well as it could be arranged.

Impulsively, he closed the bloody window.

And it was only then, when there was no more work he could do, that he noticed she hadn't been wearing a gown at all. Under the cloak of curtains he gave her, she was wrapped in a thin white sheet, just like the one that still covered her bed.

 _Our bed._

 _No wonder that the septon was worried for his chastity._

Sansa would wake a dead man to life only with her appearance, without having to resort to more drastic measures employed by Lady Royce.

Sandor clenched and unclenched his sword hand, waiting.

"You look like this… Alayne at times," he observed when she was done cleaning in a non Sansa-like, decisive manner, facing him without any of her habitual fretting.

"Is that… displeasing?" she wondered, worried.

"No," he concluded, shaking his head, his mane and the tissue of his scars. "Just new. What now?" he wondered aloud. "I sleep on the floor and we leave before dawn? It'll give us most chance that the castle is quiet and no one follows, I'd say."

He would have to kill the guards at the gates.

Sansa was extremely puzzled. "But we are married," she affirmed.

"Yes, but not because you wanted it," he retorted bitterly. With the new rise of anger, the right words came. "I can't swear to protect your honour from me forever. Because I don't know if I can last that long. That doesn't mean that I'll force you in cold blood."

"But… you wanted a song."

"Aye," he couldn't contest that. "Now and before." He remembered it too well, the sky burning green, his knife on her throat, her hand on his cheek, her trembling, her pious, innocent voice; the perfection of the Mother's song, the undeserved balm for all his pain given through music and touch. "I took a song from you. But not the one I asked for, about the fool and his cunt, nor the one I wanted."

"And you won't bed me now against my will. Not until you get very drunk and very angry one day and can't help it," she rattled incredulously.

He nodded, unable to answer. That was, more or less, the truth. Or a part of it. It wasn't what he wanted. It was what he feared he might do since the bloody battle. That his temper might exceptionally betray him; in a moment of his fruitless resentment with the world, stirred further by Sansa's pretty lies and the gnawing knowledge that she would never look at him, not truly.

And he knew that he would be a hundred times worse than Gregor if he had fucked Sansa bloody and ripped her heart out in an outburst of rage after his loss against the burning piss of the alchemists.

He would have ruined her because she was lodged in his soul through no fault of her own; not because he was slightly bored and lecherous on a long summer day, and indifferent to her suffering.

His deed would have been twisted and unforgivable.

So he had left her. He couldn't have done otherwise.

To the bloody dwarf...

"I won't beg you to be my husband in truth," Sansa proclaimed, sounding offended and very much like… Alayne. "I agree with you, let us sleep and leave before dawn. Or now if you wish. The sooner the better."

 _Beg? Why? I'm the one who should be on my knees, if I knew how._

He had always been too proud for his own good.

 _Wait. Does she…?_

"Do you want _me_?" he exclaimed.

Sansa turned purple as a plum. Alayne was gone.

"I thought that it made no difference to you, what I wanted. Isn't that what you've been trying to tell me? That the world is a horrible place and that you're as awful as the rest? That I'm a fool for imagining anyone is different? That anyone can be good? That I can still be good and not just another liar?" She sounded as if she was going to burst into tears, but she never did.

 _Lady Stark._

"I said I was honest," he reacted. "It's the world that's awful. Isn't it enough?" His tears were close, threatening to come.

She gave no reply.

"Do you want me to bed you?" he asked again, with complete incredulousness, searching for the truth in her eyes.

"Does it change anything, what I want?" she replied weakly, squeezing her eyes shut, denying him the light. "You've always hated me for this and yelled at me for that, just like everyone else. You protected me at times in court, but left me on my own when you had other duties. You offered to save me and then you _disappeared_. Tonight you danced with me so beautifully after the feast and then threatened to take me by force. You…" she couldn't name the last crime she blamed him for, but it had something do with his burned lips, judging by her glaring at them. "What do you want from me?"

She scrutinised him now like a king's justice, unflinchingly.

"A song, I've told you more times," he countered her. "But if you want _me_ , for me it changes everything," he underlined.

 _A miracle._

His thought sounded like a septon's. He must have spent too much time on the Quiet Isle.

It meant that acting on his desire would still be high treason, had she become his queen, but no longer a common crime, condemned in times of peace and overlooked in war like theft and murder.

It meant that he could…

He could…

He could show her his weakness without being mocked for it.

He had seen Cersei laugh so many times when ugly gnats fell prey to her beauty, The queen wanted only one man, a very handsome one. _Her brother._

Ladies sighed after pretty boys. Sansa had been the same in the past.

"Do you even know what you want?" He asked bitterly, oppressed by his knowledge of the world. He doubted it. She must have some new illusion in her pretty head.

"I'm not certain," she whispered. Her gaze was open and warm, not quite meeting his, but not running from it either. "Maybe you could… show me how it would be. Let me find out what I want. How is it… Is there a song I could have from you? Does it sound differently than poor Harry's? These are the questions I have and can't answer."

She was being honest. Her words were simple and yet tinged with her pain in matters of the heart.

Was it more than pity that she felt for _him_ in the past?

"You saw how it was with the Imp, didn't you?" he asked cautiously, and guessed the truth before she could reply. "Or maybe you didn't…"

She was still a maiden, as the drunken septon had read from the bloody paper before they married her to a corpse. It wasn't Littlefinger's invention like he believed.

"Tyrion said he'd wait until I wanted it," Sansa confided in Sandor nervously. "I asked… I asked what would happen if I _never_ wanted it. He said… he said there were whores…"

The pure white bedding suddenly looked to Sandor like the greatest battleground of his life, on which he could win or lose forever in an important challenge.

"And with me…" he began and stopped, strangely unable to bark out his question. _Am I less ugly than the Imp with his gold and his fancy clothes?_

"With you…" Sansa also suffered from the same, in her case an unusual difficulty to form an appropriate phrase. "With Tyrion, ever since he left me alone, he was… he was like another tapestry with lions and stags hanging on the walls. I… I was indifferent to his existence. And you… you scare me and you make me so angry when you're awful and then you creep into my dreams and usurp the place of my lord husband. I've learned not to give my favour easily… like… like in the past. I may hesitate to admit what is in my heart for you, but it's strong… it…" she sounded as if she'd been confessing to herself a sin she'd committed unawares, "it's grown over time when you were gone…"

The fine weaving of her pretty words was somewhat lost on him, but the Hound understood more than well the devastating power of memory.

 _Did you think of me?_

"Not a tapestry," he parroted a part of her little speech, compulsively filling the eyrie silence of the chamber with his quiet growl.

She shook her head.

"Good," he was very pleased. "I wouldn't make a pretty one."

She disagreed. "The moment when you defended unarmed Ser Loras from your brother would be a suitably heroic theme to decorate the walls of the royal palace."

"If the lions cared for the bravery of dogs-"

"-or the honour of the wolves," Sansa completed his thought and Sandor suffered from a dangerous illusion that they understood each other.

On an instinct, his sword hand reached for Sansa, caressing her cheek, feeling the smoothness of her skin, the fine curve of her face. Delving into the wavy softness of her hair, his fingers found her tiny ear, exploring it.

"Sandor," she called him by his name and it felt as if she returned his gesture.

He prayed he wouldn't become angry and ruin the moment no matter what she said next.

"Sansa," he rasped back, tracing the line of her neck to her barely covered shoulder.

"It must be love what we have for each other," she stated impulsively, leaning her head to the side, towards his erring paw. Her shield of courtesy was lowered; she was restless, rambling. "What else can it be?"

A very strange notion came to him.

"If I'm not… _gentle,_ you say it," he voiced his weakness, allowing his buried, forbidden longings to surface, leaving the indifference behind. "Say anything you like or nothing at all. I care not for chirping. I hate lies. Even when they are as pretty as yours."

She nodded quietly, waiting for him to make a move.

 _Gentle. It's what she wants._

So he took Sansa in his arms and kissed her tenderly, with his heart in his throat, expecting refusal. It was the bravest action he ever attempted with a woman. He had never done it, though he had often imagined it. The lady he kissed in the fantasies of his youth never had a distinct face until...

True courage sometimes paid off.

He found Sansa soft and warm and wet and sweet smelling; opening up for him, trying to follow his lead like when they danced, but with pointed uncertainty what to do with her tongue and her teeth. Her innocence went in pair with his in the matter of kissing.

From there, it was easier. He knew the routine of bedding like he knew it in battle or in a dance. All men learned the same steps, somehow.

It helped that he was content with his body; it had never given him reason to feel shame like his ruined face, and the cowardly fear of fire that accompanied it.

To disarm and undress was a practiced task for him... and to unburden Sansa a new, unexpected joy...

She was more precious than the wooden knight whose joints could bend and move.

And she was meant for him.

 _His wife._

How could he not treat her well, having been so careful with the far less valuable toy he'd paid for so dearly as a child?

So he embarked patiently on the greatest quest of his life. Familiarity with the task helped him to rein in his fear of hurting Sansa and measure his actions. Yet he reached out farther than the limits of his past satisfaction from touching a woman with every moment.

As he always imagined he would.

Her hands occasionally imitated his, exploring his body in soft, unfocused touches. But mostly she was just… responding to him, seeking his embrace, tensing and sighing from his touch, gasping when he attacked her breasts, remembering to be _gentle_ in the middle of sucking at them. When her nipples hardened, she appeared to be lost in what he was making her feel.

What he was making her feel… Had she promised him that she would melt in his arms, he would have called her a liar.

And now it made him feel good in his skin; welcome, wanted, loved.

It made him believe that, when he made her wet between her legs, it was for him and not for some pretty knight she saw in her head.

Yet there was pain when she became his wife in truth; strong and ugly. Sansa closed her pretty blue eyes tightly, sobbing from pain. Tears ran slowly down her face, like when they beat her in court.

Sandor halted, petrified, transferring all his weight onto his arms; away from her.

 _A maiden, she was a maiden, you fool._

He couldn't take it back. It was the same with killing.

But there was no sweetness in it, no joy.

His bitterest kill.

"Sansa," he called to her and felt his old pain back in his throat, choking him. Was it more merciful to continue and finish faster than he could kill, or to pull out and forget this?

He didn't dare move.

Sansa slowly reopened her eyes.

They were brilliant and alive, not dead like when she was beaten. She had the same restless look she began to show him that night. Her tears glimmered like little pearls on an intensely blue pond of rippling water.

"Slow now, please," she managed to say. "Very slow, I think."

Her hand anchored itself on his maimed cheek as though he had somehow invited her there. He realised... that his tears had come as well, treacherous and warm. The pain in his throat lessened.

He could go on if he dared.

Finding his courage, he moved with extreme caution and thought that she… followed.

Their gazes remained locked like their bodies.

He didn't know he could take a woman that slow, nor that the unusual action would not diminish his pleasure, which came sudden and strong as her pain, with helpless, incredulous moans on his burned lips.

The truth of bedding Sansa carried him beyond the confines of his wildest fantasies, to a place that didn't exist.

Where his scars didn't matter and where he didn't have a kennel.

To a place where he had a home.

When he came back to his senses, Sansa met him with an honest smile and the radiance of accomplishment.

She sought his lips for a quick _kiss_ , and then remained quiet in his arms; a little bird brooding, pondering her new reality, regretting it, maybe. Sooner than Sandor would have expected, her pretty words came back to her.

"Did you truly profess your undying love for me before we were wed? And… and the rude remark about your heart burning with pain because of me, you made later…" she had to wonder, just when he thought she might let him sleep. "Was it… was it you… was it your chirping because I wanted to hear that you loved me? Or did you mean it?"

 _Why do you have to ask?_

 _Didn't I say the vows?_

 _Didn't I just show you?_

She nonetheless deserved an answer.

So he began, looking her in the eye, "A hound will die for you-"

A dainty hand was on his lips.

"-but never lie to you," she continued his old thought. "And he'll look you straight in the face."

"You remember that?"

"I thought I remembered _this_ as well," she kissed him again, long and sweet.

She was twittering some ladies' nonsense. He'd never understand her.

Or maybe he would… in time.

"I never kissed a woman before," he blurted.

It wasn't his last secret. He ought to tell her the entire story about his family and… hers. His travel with her little sister.

 _Tomorrow._

Sansa's eyes widened.

"Yes you did," she argued with a disbelieving, bright smile instead of the pity he constantly expected and feared. "Me, in my imagination. On the night of the battle, before you put a knife on my throat and left me," she swallowed hard. Her happiness diminished.

Sandor cringed from the memory of himself at his lowest that she… what, embellished to look like something out of her stupid songs? A true _knight_ kissing a noble lady and offering to rescue her?

"Who else kissed you in your imagination?" Sandor rasped angrily, "Joffrey, Meryn? Any other man who treated you poorly?"

"I hated Joff and Meryn," she countered, offended, leaving the bed; marching for the bloody window with utmost dignity. "They never kissed me nor was I ever so stupid to imagine it."

Sandor caught her from behind, just as she wrenched the window open and took a deep breath of cold air.

"With Petyr… I feared him. And I was nauseated by his kisses," she continued with more calm, reclining into Sandor's naked form. "There was no need to imagine any more of them than what I had to endure." Her hands grasped the Hound's paws, that had closed firmly around her waist as a safety precaution.

"So it's good he fell," Sandor mocked her half-heartedly..

"Fell?" Sansa protested. " _I_ pushed him. Alayne helped."

"I know you did," he murmured, sniffing her hair and combing it with his fingers. The sea of auburn silk. "And you did well. He betrayed your father. I'm not privy to the details, but when Cersei had Lord Stark arrested, Littlefinger held a dagger on his throat and bragged that your father had been wrong to trust him. An entirely unnecessary endeavour if Baelish only wanted to flatter the queen."

Sansa shivered. "I didn't know, but it doesn't come as a surprise," she said frostily. "I hope he won't be able to deceive the gods."

 _There are no gods._

Yet the gentle, and not only true words to give to Sansa finally came to Sandor, as another miracle. "You're also the only woman I ever imagined kissing," his rasp was a vivid whisper in her ear, tumultuous like his nature.

The faceless, fine lady from his fantasies had slowly acquired Sansa's features over the years. She wouldn't leave his head, no matter how much Sandor drank or refused to see her in his omnipotent anger.

Sansa wriggled in his grip, turning to face him.

"Then don't insult me by assuming what you don't know," she breathed out.

He couldn't promise that. Expecting the worst from people was a good instinct; it had kept him alive in the past.

What he could do was kiss Sansa more fervently than before, savouring the little surprised gasps she made.

He was already beginning to understand this new need for kissing. He had always been fast in learning new, useful steps in combat.

He could kiss her to thank her and to tease her. To show how sorry he was. To demand the song he desired without resorting to words.

He could hint his intentions with sweet leisure, giving a foretaste of stronger pleasures that could be... shared... without scaring her away.

"Too soon?" He wondered how she felt when it was clear that he could do it again. "Too much?"

"Maybe," she admitted. "Probably," she confessed. "Let's see," she offered.

"Us?"

"You and me," she confirmed, erasing his fears.

He expected slow.

As always, Sansa surprised him. She became more daring in her pretty movements. It was... as though she used her flustered anger at his insolence to fight off her pain. Maybe, just maybe, she found a woman's pleasure; clinging to him, sighing beautifully before and after his body betrayed him.

He… he was exhausted and empty. _Drained._ Not from exertion, but from all differing passions that had been raging in his soul since he allowed himself, and _Sansa,_ he recalled with sheer contentment, the impossible.

His heart pounded with hope for more.

 _A proper song has many verses._

In his weariness, he convulsively kissed Sansa to stay awake a little longer, with his wife in his arms.

"A hound will die for you…" she murmured. "True?"

"Aye. One day." It was a possibility.

"You can't, Sandor," she admonished him dreamily, nesting in his embrace. "I refuse to believe it. I want to be your loving wife, not your grieving widow."

The world was still very dark when they departed from the Gates of the Moon, set to leave the Vale.

The snow began to fall.

Winterfell wasn't that far.

THE END

Endnote:

As you all know, "A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face," and "I'm honest it's the world that's awful" are direct quotes from the Clash of Kings, Sandor to Sansa.


End file.
